The People Called it "RAGTIME"

Last Wednesday night, Matt and I attended Carnegie Mellon University's spring musical production of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's 1996 work, Ragtime.  Knowing both the quality of the CMU Drama program and accounting for my personal history with this particular show, I started out with high expectations.

If it had just been about the quality of the singers and actors, I'd have nothing mostly positive notes to write.  Stepping back from the three prior productions of the show I've known and acknolwledging that the people onstage were college students, I can honestly say there was a lot to be impressed by.  Yet, as these things so often go, it's the grown-ups who got in the way and made bad choices that really proved challenging to the integrity of the show.

Ragtime is not a show that deals in subtlety.  From its creation over twenty years ago, it's been derided for being rather power-ballad heavy.  When a light moment of amusement comes along, it's almost shocking.  But, then again, the souce material - E.L. Doctorow's epic historical-novel of the same name - focuses on the years leading up to World War I and how history enfolds three families (one white WASP, one black, and one Latvian immigrant) and brings real-world figures into and between their lives.

Yet, somehow, CMU faculty member and director, Tome Cousin, decided that the More is MORE approach was somehow necessary when it came to already big ideas in a big show.  Rather than trusting the material, which has endured two Broadway productions, a London mounting, various concerts, and many, many regional stagings, Cousin allowed many moments to be completely buried in bad staging, poor line readings, and production gadgetry.

It's one thing for a set to be clever.  It's another for it to be ugly.  More often than not, this set, which I'm sure was believed to be too clever by half, got in the way of the actors, muddied up where exactly the action was supposedly taking place, and became the backdrop for unnecessary projections that, even from the back of the Chosky Theatre, weren't very clear or necessary.

Three enormous revolving steel towers, overburdened by staircases, unable to be removed from the stage, made up the majority of the set design.  That they were computer controlled is impressive for a college production.  However, I found the towers to be too large and too in the way.  If the center tower had been able to be removed from the stage so that there could be a clear view to the color-illuminated panorama backdrop, I might have thought better of it.  But when a pair of characters is supposed to be having a country picnic in front of a rusty steel and brick tower, you can see where it becomes problematic.

Projections came into vogue in the last decade as a cheap alternative to physically constructed set pieces.  That doesn't make them worth the trouble, necessarily.  It makes them happen, though.  Why, for instance, when we're in the patrician suburban home of the white WASP family, is there a projection of a billboard for the father's fireworks factory overhead?  Why not, rather, let a few props and furnishings indicate the home?  It should be said that the furnishings were there.  A piano.  A silver tea set on a tea table.  Chairs.  Surely these very wealthy people don't advertise their business on the side of their home.  Similarly, a tender moment between Sarah and the baby she abandoned was wrong-headedly staged in front of an enormous projection of the full moon that nearly covered the backdrop.  Are we suddenly on a 1914 spaceship?

The blocking and entrances, in so many cases, seemed to be under-rehearsed and awkward.  When Father arrives back at the house on Broadview Avenue after a year away with Admiral Peary on a voyage to the North Pole, there's quite simply no front door through which he is welcomed.  He sauntered between two towers in an area that had no definition as part of the house.  Similarly, it was merciful that Coalhouse's Model T Ford was built on nimble casters.  No Model T was ever forced to cut such odd angles in real life.

Finally, and perhaps most egregious, was the director not being able or willing to trust the material.  I understand that this production is a scaled-back version licensed for smaller companies.  Why on earth one of the most capable drama schools in the nation would choose to present a lesser version and then clutter it up with the set towers is beyond me.  The orchestrations felt thin, lacking the depth of a string section, and some unforgivable cuts were made to pivotal lines and songs.

The ending, though, is what will stick in my mind as the most egregious change.  During the show's epilogue, the new family - composed of Mother and the Little Boy and Tateh and the Little Girl - are supposed to be joined by Sarah and Coalhouse's child.  He's supposed to run onto the stage, now a toddler or young boy.

And they didn't do it.

For the first time in four productions of this show, I was left cold by the ending because this one small touch - one that is, for the record, called for in the script - was ignored.

The thing that leaves me saddest about this production is that, for a first-time viewer of the show, this is what they think it should be.  No, it didn't need to be the enormous spectacle that the original 1997 production was.  The 2009 revival proved that.  But what needs to remain intact is the story.  It should be told, but it should be told by a director that believes in its integrity.